Thessalonica

by Harry Turtledove

  George popped up long enough to shoot at the Slavs, then ducked back down again. Up, shoot, duck . . . up, shoot, duck .. . “They haven’t tried anything like this for a while,” he said, nocking another arrow.

  “Sure haven’t,” agreed Rufus, who was also grabbing for a new shaft. “Whatever they’re doing, they’re bloody serious about it.”

  “Of course they’re serious,” a newcomer said. “Have you ever seen anybody tell jokes while he was shooting a bow?”

  “Hullo, John,” George said without looking up. Till you did it just now, no, I hadn’t seen anybody do that.”

  “He did, didn’t he?” Dactylius said. “Is it time to change shifts already? I mean, would it be time? If I’m not there when I’m supposed to be, it will make Claudia very unhappy.”

  “She’d be even more unhappy if the Slavs take the city,” Paul pointed out; the taverner had come up onto the wall with the comic. He shot at the Slavs. “Got one there, I think.”

  “There are enough of them, I’ll say that,” Rufus said. “They haven’t brought the whole army forward like this since . . .” His brow, already wrinkled, furrowed still more as he thought. “Since that time they used those tortoises to try and undermine the walls.”

  After George let fly with another arrow, he stayed upright longer than he had been doing. “I see more of them, getting ready to use those big shields they had then.”

  “Let me have a look.” Rufus stood up beside him, ignoring the arrows humming by as if they were so many gnats. George pointed. The veteran let out a grunt. “Aye, that’s what they’re doing. Didn’t know whether they’d try the same stunt twice, but I always figured they might. And don’t the Scriptures talk about a dog coming back to its vomit?”

  “That means coming back to a bad idea,” George said, loosing another shaft at the advancing Slavs. “For them, this is liable to be coming back to a good idea.” He shot again. The arrow ricocheted from one of the large, heavy shields. He cursed.

  So did Rufus. “Aye, it’s liable to be,” he agreed. After he looked around at the piles of stones on the walkway, his curses put George’s to shame. “I’ve been screaming at everybody who might listen, but we still haven’t put back as many rocks as we dropped on the Slavs the last time they tried tortoises against us.” He raised his voice to a great bellow: “Water and fuel for the cauldrons!” In more conversational tones, he said to George, “We’ll never get stones up here quick enough to do much good. Dropping boiling water on the whoresons will still help, though.”

  “It had better,” George said. The tortoise crews moved steadily forward. The shoemaker pointed to them. “They’ve learned from what went wrong the first time. Now they’ve got the shields up to make their shells right from the start.”

  “Only way to do it,” Rufus said absently, and then, “I wish they were as stupid as those Goths and Franks and Lombards over in Italy. The German tribes didn’t know how to do anything except bash and slash, and they didn’t want to learn, either.”

  Under George’s feet, the wall shivered. The first tortoise had reached it and, under cover of the iron-faced shields, the Slavs were using pry bars and hammers and chisels to try to pull stones out of the base and send the whole thing tumbling down. George set down his bow, picked up a stone, and dropped it down toward the attackers. It landed with a dull thud, not a clatter, telling him he’d missed.

  Dactylius threw a stone down on the Slavs, too. He cheered when he heard a crash, but the barbarians kept chipping away at the wall, which meant the shields above them had turned the stone.

  John said, “If this goes on much longer, it could get very boring.” After a moment, he added, “Running out of rocks up here could be boring, too.” Boring, as he used it, seemed to mean getting everyone on the wall killed.

  Rufus lifted a stone. It was not one of the enormous boulders he’d picked up the first time the Slavs tried tortoises, but of more ordinary size and weight. Even so, it was enough to make him stagger. George decided God really had been helping him then. He also decided God wasn’t helping Rufus now. When the veteran dropped the stone, he missed the tortoise, as George had.

  The vibration underfoot got worse as more and more

  Slavic crews got to work at the base of the wall. “We aren’t going to have enough rocks to smash all of them,” Paul said. “I don’t know how else we’re going to stop them, either.” George had been thinking the same thing. He’d kept quiet, hoping it wouldn’t be true if he didn’t say it. Now Paul had said it. It was true.

  Rufus’ face was haggard, for once showing every one of his years. “We’re in trouble,” he said, each word dragged from him.

  “A sally?” George asked, as he had before.

  He saw how much Rufus wanted to say no, to keep fighting from the top of Thessalonica’s wall, the wall that had for so long warded the Romans within from the barbarians outside. But the wall trembled beneath their feet, and might crumble beneath those feet at any moment. Looking as if every word tasted bad, Rufus said, “Aye, a sally.” The decision made, he wasted no time wondering whether he should change his mind. Instead, he shouted, “Come on, you lugs! Grab your swords and shields and get down to the gate. If we can’t make the Slavs leave the wall alone any other way, we’ll have to chase ‘em off!”

  Having set down all his arms but his bow and arrow when he got up to the walkway, George had to snatch them up in a hurry now. Several of his comrades were doing the same thing. Rufus had already started down the stairway toward the Litaean Gate. John, Paul, George, and Dactylius hurried after him, along with a couple of dozen other militiamen from farther away.

  Down on the ground, Rufus was shoving every able-bodied man he could find in the direction of the gate. “Here, what are you doing?” Menas shouted in anger and alarm. “Do you know who I am?”

  Rufus kept shoving. “You’re not much more than half my age, and you’ve got that big, fancy hammer in your hand,” he answered. “Past that, pal, I don’t care who you are.”

  This time, the soldier at the postern gate gave Rufus no argument when he ordered it open. “Doesn’t this look like fun!” John exclaimed. But the tavern comic was the first one through the gate, out into the hostile world beyond the wall.

  George followed a moment later. He let out the loudest shout he could, both to frighten the Slavs and to try to make himself believe he wasn’t frightened. He didn’t know how he did on the first count. On the second, he faded miserably.

  He ran toward the tortoise closest to the Litaean Gate. Arrows hissed past, bouncing back from the wall or shattering against it. To his relief, the Slavic archers didn’t come rushing forward to engage his comrades and him in hand-to-hand combat. There were enough of them that they might have overwhelmed the militiamen by force of numbers alone.

  Behind their shields, the Slavs in the tortoise saw the Romans running at them and shouted in alarm. John pulled one of the shields aside and slashed at the men it sheltered. Suddenly, the tortoise broke up as the warriors inside realized they had to fight for their lives. Their pry bars and hammers were better weapons against stone than against soldiers. The big, heavy shields were more suited to warding off rocks cast from above than attackers at close quarters, too.

  One of the Slavs swung at George with the iron bar he held in lieu of a sword. George got his shield in front of the blow. Pain shot up his arm, all the way to the shoulder. He cut at the Slav, then circled rapidly to his left, away from that part of the barbarian the shield protected. The Slav grunted in alarm and tried to turn with him, but the iron-faced shield weighed so much, it made him slow. And, in his desperate urgency, he tripped over his own feet and sprawled on the ground.

  Bang! Bang! Menas’ silvered hammer came down upon his head. Had George dropped a pumpkin from the wall to the ground below, it would have made a sound like that when it hit. Blood sprayed. The Slav writhed, then lay still. Menas hit him again, to make sure that he was dead.

  “Er--thank you,” Georg
e said, feeling such awkwardness as he’d never known at having to be grateful to the noble.

  Menas exploded that gratitude as thoroughly as he’d ruined the Slav’s head. Swinging the hammer, he said, “I wish it had been you.”

  George wondered if he could make Menas suffer an unfortunate accident out here beyond the wall. It would make the noble’s wife a widow, true, but, after being married to Menas, widowhood might look good to her.

  Though such thoughts ran through the shoemaker’s mind, he had not the slightest chance to do anything about them. Nor did Menas do anything to him that would have given him an excuse to make the noble suffer that unfortunate accident. Both of them, along with the rest of the militiamen who had sallied from several gates, were and stayed busy battling the Slavs who had been assaulting the wall of Thessalonica.

  Some of those Slavs fought as fiercely as any men George had ever seen, in spite of their makeshift weapons and clumsy shields. One of them came within a whisker of caving in his skull with a pry bar. Only the pointed tip slid across his forehead, slicing the skin so that blood kept running down into his left eye.

  That was the last swing the Slav ever took; George’s sword slammed into the side of his neck a moment later. The barbarian let out a hoarse, gobbling cough; blood poured from the wound and from his mouth. Even as he began to topple, George ran past him. The shoemaker had been one of the first men out of the postern gate on the sally, and he’d come as far from it as any of his comrades. The farther he went, the more Slavs he could drive from the wall.

  Not all the barbarians stood up against the unexpected Roman attack. More than a few ran away from the militiamen, some dropping their shields to flee the faster. Bowmen who’d stayed up on the wall shot several of them.

  George let out a hoarse cheer every time he saw one fall.

  The Slavic archers who’d been shooting at the defenders on the wall and at the sally parties kept their distance-- till mounted Avars showed up behind them and started shouting what had to be threats. More afraid of their overlords than they were of the Romans (a regrettably sensible attitude, as far as George was concerned), the Slavs ran toward the militiamen, whom they badly outnumbered.

  “Back!” Rufus shouted. “They aren’t banging away at the wall anymore, and that’s what we wanted. Come back!”

  George would have been delighted to do just that, but he and a Slav were busy trying to kill each other. Finally, as if by common consent, they turned and ran away from each other. George was appalled to discover how close other Slavs were, and how far away all his comrades had got.

  There went Paul, back through the postern gate. There went Sabbatius. George hadn’t noticed him coming out. There went John, loping along with a bloody sword. There went Rufus. George ran harder. Not many Romans-- hardly any Romans--remained outside the wall.

  There went Menas. The noble turned around and looked out at George. He smiled. Tm the last of us!” he shouted. “The very last!” He slammed the postern gate shut. The bar thudded down.

  IX

  From up on top of the wall, people shouted down to the men by the postern gate that somebody hadn’t managed to get in. Those shouts did George no good whatever. The gate didn’t open again right away, and what looked like all the Slavs in the world were bearing down on him.

  George turned his face from the wall and ran for his life. Not quite so many Slavs were coming from the southwest, and the woods in that direction were fairly close. He slashed at a Slavic archer as he sprinted. The barbarian fell back with a howl of pain.

  George was in among the Slavs now. No more arrows hissed past him. The archers most likely feared hitting their own comrades. If they closed with him, he was dead, and he knew it. But he was still swinging that sword, and they were armed with nothing better than bows and belt knives. That left them unenthusiastic about closing.

  Breath sobbing in his throat, heart thudding as if it would burst at any moment, he got closer and closer to the woods. Now most of the Slavs were behind him, which meant they started sending arrows after him once more. He remembered they were in the habit of poisoning those arrows, and wished he could have kept on forgetting it.

  Here was the brush. His boots scrunched on dry, fallen leaves. He groaned--how could he hope to go anywhere without giving himself away with every step he took? He wondered if the barbarians had let him get into the woods just to give themselves the pleasure of hunting him down. He’d watched cats playing with mice. Let the little creature think it can break free? Why not, especially when it’s blocked off from its hole?

  “Sometimes the mouse does get away,” he panted, dodging between tree trunks. “Sometimes the cat ends up with a stupid look on its face.” Most of the time, the mouse got eaten. He knew it. Again, he did his best not to think about it.

  From right beside him, a voice spoke in Greek: “Sometimes mouse gets help.” He had all he could do not to scream. He hadn’t thought anyone was right beside him. Some Slavs were coming through the woods after him--much more quietly than he could--but . . .

  He turned his head. A satyr looked back at him, its amber eyes wide and amused, its phallus jutting out almost as far as his sword. Was it the one he’d met when he was out hunting, that day not long before the Slavs and Avars came? He thought so, but couldn’t be sure.

  “Come,” the satyr said. “Not stay here long.” He didn’t know whether that meant the creature couldn’t stay so close to Christian Thessalonica for long, or whether it deemed staying so close to so many Slavs unsafe. Either way, George couldn’t argue with it.

  The satyr hurried away. Leaves flew up from under its hooves, but it made no noise as it moved. None--as far as George’s ears could tell, it might as well not have been there. He blundered along as he always had, sounding like a herd of cattle being driven to market over a field of kettledrums, or so his racket sounded to himself.

  But however appalling the racket he made, the Slavs didn’t seem able to use it to track him. He heard them shouting back behind him. Some of them peeled off to the left of his true track, others to the right. Both groups, by the excitement in their voices, thought they’d seize him at any moment. Meanwhile, he got farther and farther away from them.

  Realization blossomed. “You’re doing this!” he said to the satyr.

  “Yes. Hush. Not safe yet.” On it went, silent itself and using the noise George made as a ventriloquist uses his voice: throwing it in every direction but that from which it truly came.

  Something small and winged peered out at them from the branch of a sapling. It made a piping sound that had words buried in it. They were not Greek words. All at once, both groups of Slavs behind George started moving in the right direction.

  Snorting with fear, the satyr grabbed for the fairy. It flitted into the air, those dragonfly wings buzzing. The satyr grabbed again and missed again. “Kill this thing!” it called to George.

  “Who, me?” the shoemaker said in surprise. Without much conscious thought, he swung his sword at the fairy. He started to pray to God to help him, but swallowed the words at the last instant: the holy name would surely make the satyr flee. And maybe God was helping him through the satyr, or would be if George let Him.

  He felt no resistance when his blade, as much by luck as by design, passed through the fairy’s translucent body. But a tingle ran up his arm, as if lightning had struck close by. Light flared from the swordblade. Where the fairy had been was--nothing.

  “Good!” The satyr groped for words. “That thing look, tell ...” It ran a hand up and down its erection, as if it kept its brains there. George wouldn’t have been surprised; he knew some men who did.

  He gave the satyr the word it wanted: “It was a spy.”

  “A spy, yes!” The satyr’s smile stretched across its snub-nosed face. “Not speak much, not need many names for longish time. Now need again. You give.” Before George could answer that, the mercurial creature changed the subject: “You have wine? You give wine, like before?” It wa
s the same satyr, then.

  “No, I’m sorry. I have none.” George hadn’t bothered bringing a skin of wine up onto the wall with him. What point, when he’d be going back down again before long and could step into whatever tavern he liked? He hadn’t expected to go beyond the wall, to be trapped outside of Thessalonica, or to need wine to make a thirsty satyr happy.

  Its pointed ears drooped. “No wine,” it said, as if summer had gone to winter in the space of two words. It trudged along with slumped shoulders. Now, for the first time, George could faintly hear its hooves moving through the leaves, as if the very aura of magic surrounding it was fading.

  He knew how absurd it was to feel guilt at not having done something he couldn’t possibly have known he would need to do. He felt it anyhow. “I am sorry,” he said. “Here, how’s this? When we find a village, I’ll get some for you there.” He didn’t have more than a few folleis in his beltpouch, but they ought to serve. If they didn’t, he would trade work--shoe repairs, for instance--for wine. The thought made him feel better.

  It didn’t seem to make the satyr happier. “Not find villages,” the creature said, stroking itself again. “Not for a while, not find.”

  “What do you mean?” George said. “The hills around Thessalonica are full of villages. Why--” He paused, trying to work out the direction in which they’d gone. “There should be one over, over--” He started to point, then stopped. He tried again to get his bearings.

  Eyes glowing, the satyr looked back at him. It looked amused. “You see now? Not for a while, not find.”

  “Yes,” George said slowly. “Where are we, anyway?” He didn’t know if that was the precise question he wanted to ask, but couldn’t find a better one. As he ran through the woods, the ground on which he set his feet and the trees and bushes all around him seemed familiar enough: he would have seen their like had he gone out from Thessalonica to hunt in quieter, more peaceful times.